Nearly two years after Hassan Rouhani was elected
Iran’s presidentand began the slow process of
rebuilding trust with Washington, a nuclear deal was reached last week in
Switzerland. His nation promised to make drastic cuts to its nuclear programme
in return for the gradual lifting of sanctions as part of a historic breakthrough
in Lausanne that could end a 13-year nuclear standoff.

“Today is a day that will remain in the historical memory
of the Iranian nation,” the moderate cleric said shortly after the deal was
announced, as he thanked Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, without
whose approval he could never have stepped up engagement with the west.

Rouhani swept to a surprise landslide victory in Iran’s
2013 presidential elections as a candidate of curious contradictions – a cleric
from the heart of the political establishment who carried the battered hopes of
reformists.

A former nuclear negotiator who had preached and practised
moderation and compromise, he promised Iranians that he would be the candidate
to end their country’s isolation, without also ending its peaceful nuclear
programme.

It was an ambitious pledge that would be battered by the
opposition of hardliners at home, in western capitals and Israel, and until
last week no one was really sure if he could pull it off.

Rouhani was born to a modest family of farmers and carpet
weavers in the hamlet of Sorkheh, where his father owned a spice shop and had
links to clerics in the city of Qom, a centre of religious learning and
authority for Shias. A calm child and good student, he enjoyed reading the Qur’an
but also nurtured a love for swimming and mountain hiking that friends say has
endured to this day.

The president has described his family as “religious and
revolutionary”; they were also close-knit. His brother, Hossein Fereydoun,
serves as his special adviser and was at the heart of the Lausanne talks, and
when their mother died after a long illness last month, negotiations were
briefly suspended.

At around the age of 20, he had an arranged marriage to
his 14-year-old cousin, Sahebeh, who kept such a low profile for many years
that when Rouhani was running his election campaign journalists did not even
know her name.

He went on to a seminary in Qom, where he became a cleric
and forged the ties that would underpin his life, career and even his name.
After his preaching attracted the attention of the shah’s feared secret police,
the Savak, he changed it in a bid to escape capture. Eventually he decided Iran was too dangerous,
and fled to Paris, before returning in triumph after the revolution.

His credentials and intellect ensured a rapid rise and to
the very heart of Iran’s government. He was commander of national air defence
during the war with Iran in the 1980s, and in 1986, as deputy speaker of parliament,
took part in secret talks with the US over the arms-for-hostages deal that
became known as the Iran-Contra affair. In 1989, the year Khomeini died, he was
made secretary of the supreme national security council. “He is the ultimate
insider,” a former Tehran-based diplomat said soon after his election. “He
knows all Iran’s secrets.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, his impeccable
revolutionary credentials, Rouhani has never seemed bound to any of its
orthodoxies, including kneejerk anti-Americanism. He caused a minor sensation
in 2003 when he visited the scene of the devastating Bam earthquake and took
the unusual step of thanking America for its help in a field hospital staffed
by US medics.

Over a decade later, he called subtle attention to that
early gesture of friendship by tweeting a picture of the visit, and calling for
the healing of a “very old wound”, the day after his first presidential
election.

He chose to study for both his masters and doctorate in
Glasgow, juggling the final stage of his education with his position as deputy
speaker of the Iranian parliament, apparently with great humility. “He was on
first (name) terms with fellow students,” Prof Hassan Amin, now retired from
the law faculty at Glasgow Caledonian University, told the BBC. “Many times he
ate in the students’ canteen and sometimes I would take him to the staff
restaurant. He chose Great Britain because he has respect for the legal system
here, for the judiciary and also for the legislative system.”

He also has a reputation for staying cool in even the most
emotional political crisis, due in part to his response to the 1998 murder of
several Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan. The killings sparked a wave of public
anger that other politicians tried to ride; Rouhani was one of the rare regime
voices to oppose a military response.

Part of the hope his election victory sparked among
foreign governments, keen to end the standoff with Iran, was born of his
previous role as a top nuclear negotiator. The British and American diplomats
he faced across the table respected him as an effective pragmatist.

“People don’t realise that he’s the one who convinced
Khamenei to stop the clandestine military nuclear programme at the end of
2003,” François Nicoullaud, France’s ambassador to Iran at the time, told Time
magazine when Rouhani was elected. “This makes me optimistic now because I
believe that he is a man able to take such an important step.”

He was sidelined by the election of populist hardliner
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, resigning to run a government thinktank, the
Centre for Strategic Research, that became something of a haven for others out
of favour with the government.

He was an outspoken critic of Ahmadinejad and his team for
nearly a decade, domestically and abroad. “A nuclear weaponised Iran
destabilises the region, prompts a regional arms race, and wastes the scarce
resources in the region,” he wrote in a letter to Time
magazine in 2006. “An Iranian bomb will accord Iran no security
dividends.”

That opposition culminated in the presidential race, when
he faced off against Ahmadinejad’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. He
accused him of crippling the country and its economy with short-sighted
dogmatism. “It is good to have centrifuges running, provided people’s lives and
livelihoods are also running,” he said in one TV debate. “All of our problems
stem from this – that we didn’t make the utmost effort to prevent the nuclear
dossier from going to the UN security council.”

The pragmatic flexibility on means, without compromise on
principles, appears to define much of his life and career; it is even laid out
in the introduction to his doctoral thesis. “This thesis verifies that no laws
in Islam are immutable,” the abstract explains. “Immutability is only
applicable to faith, values and ultimate goals in Shariah.”

Indeed, his lifelong enthusiasm for defying conventional
expectations in pursuit of his goals continued into office, where among other
innovations he has embraced opportunities offered by Twitter to communicate
with supporters – even though it is officially banned in Iran.

Last summer, he tweeted a picture of an Iranian
mathematician who had won a prestigious medal, considered the Nobel prize for
maths, without a headscarf. “Congrats to #MaryamMirzakhani on becoming the
first ever woman to win the #FieldsMedal, making us Iranians very proud,” Rouhani said,
attaching two photos. Women are legally obliged to cover their heads in Iran,
which made the picture highly controversial; one newspaper later photoshopped
in a head covering.

But his limited authority has also disappointed some who
expected faster progress on promises of transformation on everything from
political prisoners to relaxation of religious dress codes.

Several high-profile cases have been a reminder of the
power hardliners still wield in Iran’s complicated political system, where the
office of president is just one centre of authority, and like all other
factions must defer to the supreme leader.

The Washington Post’s correspondent in Tehran,
Iranian-American Jason Rezaian,
has been detained for nearly eight months, and little is known about the
charges levelled against him. His wife is also facing charges, though she has
been released on bail.

The Lausanne deal, though, was a huge victory for Rouhani,
and the nationwide celebrations that followed an endorsement of his chosen
approach, cautious persistence. If the final agreement can be sealed for June,
that diplomatic achievement and the economic benefits it will bring may earn
him room to focus his intellect and political skills on another target.

THE ROUHANI FILE

Born Hassan Feridoun in
1948, in Sorkheh. He changed his name when he became a cleric. He has an MPhil
and PhD in law from Glasgow Caledonian University.

Best of times Surprise
landslide win in the 2013 presidential election.

Worst of times His eldest
son died in mysterious but violent circumstances in 1992; it is not clear if it
was murder or suicide.

He says “We can’t
take people to heaven by force and with a whip. We shouldn’t interfere in
people’s lives to such an extent, even out of compassion. Let them choose their
own path to heaven.”

They say “He’s best
described as a man of the centre with excellent political links to all
parts of the political spectrum in Iran,” said Sir Richard Dalton, a former
British ambassador to Iran, and associate fellow at Chatham House.

“His maxim will be more ‘let’s go for what works’, rather
than to respond to a preconceived reform programme.”